News, Insight, Friends, Stories and Community – not just about surf, but epic surf!

(Wednesday 4th April 2012): NEW Minister for Sport, the Hon Kate Lundy was lucky enough to see many of our Australian surfing champions in action today, with the second stop on the 2012 ASP World Championship Tour season, the Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach continuing at Bells Beach.

University of Sao Paulo is ready to kick off the fifth edition of its advanced academic program in surfing management. All classes will run from 24th April to 19th June, from 7pm-9.30pm. The two-month course “Surfing: Administration, Marketing and Business Management” promises to gather the best names of the Brazilian surf industry in a complete lesson kit. The MBA of Portuguese-speaking surfers features several interesting dossiers. History of the surfing market, managing surf companies, marketing in surfing, events and sponsorships, surf publishing, surfing legislation and surf retail.

The Global Surf Film Festival Collective is the new planetary organization formed to help surf filmmakers submit to multiple worldwide surf film festivals at once without the hassle of sending their DVD’s around the globe. If you’re a surf movie director, you can submit your salted water films easily at gsffc.org, after completing a special form. Once the form is submitted, you will be emailed directions to securely upload your film and other supporting documents to our private viewing site which is only accessible to the festival programmers. Each festival has its own unique program and independently chooses their film lineup. Acceptance to one festival does not necessarily imply acceptance to all. Individual festival progammers will reach out to filmmakers direct to secure films for their lineup.

The Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach 2012 is on and the first day of competition saw clean three-to-four foot (1 metre) waves at the primary venue of Bells Beach. No alarms and no surprises. The top seeds are through to Round 3. Owen Wright was in sensational form during his opening round bout with Patrick Gudauskas and Bede Durbidge, posting the highest heat total of the round, a 17.93 out of a possible 20. “It’s really turning on out there,” Wright said. “After watching that first heat and noticing it was slow I figured we would be on in terms of waves. Bells is always slow heat, fast heat, slow heat, fast heat. It was good to get into a rhythm and wrack up a few solid scores.” Consistently one of the best-performing goofy-footers on the elite ASP World Championship Tour, Wright draws inspiration from 1999 ASP World Champion and goofy-footed legend Mark Occhilupo. Coincidently, Occhilupo is the last goofy-footer to claim the Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach, back in 1998. “I’m feeling in form and I’ve actually been drawing a lot of inspiration from Occy (Mark Occhilupo) at Margaret River last week,” Wright said.

As we recently said in our Bells Beach preview, Taj Burrow is probably the most consistent surfer of the last decade besides Kelly Slater. Unfortunately for Burrow, his career happened to coincide with the age of Slater and Andy Irons. Otherwise, he would have won a world title by now. His rookie year,…

Cat Woods is a yoga and barre instructor based in Melbourne, Australia. She deeply loves both yoga and surfing and the endless pursuit of knowledge, skill, and fluidity in both. This is the goal with yoga – to move on the mat, and off the mat, with a light step and an easy, relaxed movement. Not unlike a wave rolling into shore, or the slip of a surfboard across the peak of a wave. Light, confident, almost floating but also deeply grounded from the core to the earth. The human body is made up of approximately 72 percent water. It is only natural that we should be drawn to the salty sea. It is only natural that we should like to move with rhythm, smooth and fluid poses, transitions and pace.

It’s never too late to avoid surfer’s ear. The new Alpine SurfSafe universal ear plugs are made in the Netherlands and will protect you against exostosis. Surfer’s ear is becoming a global threat to the wave riding community, especially those living and surfing in cold environments. The strange condition kicks in at full power after 30 years of age, and may very well require surgery. That’s why the only option is wearing surf ear plugs. Unlike other models available in the market, Alpine’s SurfSafe ear plugs do not feature support wings that fit in the external cavity or both ears.

It’s official. The Mavericks big wave surfing competition is officially part of the World Surf League (WSL). The WSL confirmed reached an agreement with Cartel Management, and the iconic Northern California surf break will be included in the current 2017/2018 Big Wave Tour (BWT) season. “The WSL has always held a high amount of respect for the both venue and its community as one of the pillars of big wave surfing. We intend to continue to run the Mavericks event and celebrate the stories of those who steward and surf it through the Big Wave Tour,” noted Sophie Goldschmidt, CEO of WSL.

Hawaii is one of the most popular surfing destinations on the planet. But, when should a European, Australian or mainland American surfer visit the Aloha State? When the American novelist-journalist Jack London and his wife Charmian visited the Pacific archipelago in 1907, they got in touch with the strange “surfboarding” pastime. Since then, tourism completely revamped Hawaii, and the number of foreigners interested in getting in touch with the spirit of aloha never stopped growing.

We’re already deep into fall, but Southern Californians are calling it the swell of the summer. If you’re a surfer living in California, you know how hard it was to find waves during the 2017 summer. If fact, it was deeply frustrating to spend the warm season chasing decent two-foot rollers. But the rainbow has finally arrived. The Wedge was set on fire by a long-period south swell that hit Newport Beach’s most famous surf break during the weekend. And you could feel the ocean’s energy from the beach.

Three-time world champion Mick Fanning went surfing at the Eisbach River, in Munich, Germany. The Australian surfer, who is set to compete at the Quiksilver Pro France, decided to visit Germany, enjoy the legendary local river wave, and taste a few beers during the iconic Oktoberfest. The Eisbach River wave is a one-meter standing wave that breaks in cold and 40-centimeter deep waters, close to a small bridge and near the Haus der Kunst art museum.